Tuesday, May 1, 2012

"I put myself in the script"

"I would rather lose playing good football than win playing mediocre stuff."

- Tele Santana

The one thing common between mediocre and great is playing in the first place. To play mediocre stuff, I have to play. To try playing great stuff, I have to play. How could I have missed that. Lots of unfinished business. Been a long time since I've been here. Scribbling down notes, jotting down inspiration but finding excuses not to be converting them into posts. Anyway, why should I post? Why should I publish? That's one thing I've pondered over and over again since I've started posting. Initially, readers' response was a huge motivating factor. When people told me I wrote well, I tried writing better. Though the need to impress superseded the need to improve. But then later on, that oozed away. Especially during the dark days when I wrote with so much more conviction than I can muster now. When all doors closed shut, this turned into my pathway of expression. Like the light at the end of the tunnel. The opening was the only direction in which I could run. Run, I did. And when I look back now, I'm surprised at what I've achieved during those days. Not much of an achievement maybe but something I'll look back to, when I turn 60.

"When somebody tells you something is wrong with your piece, they are mostly right. But when they tell you what exactly it is, they are mostly wrong."

That brings me right back onto the tracks. Why do I write now? Preserving thoughts and ideas is one explanation. And it is mostly true. I like memories. Looking back at life is at once a curse and a boon but then like Garcia Marquez said, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it." That is what exactly art does. Everything that I've ever considered art is something that transports me through time. Like my girl's smile. Genius. But this post isn't about all this. This post is just a reminder that I write. A medley of quotes I've remembered now and again when I'm riding back from office.

I like writing. More often than not. Sometimes the noun becomes far too important than the verb. I like looking at myself as one of those purists who quote "art for art's sake" but I think if somebody truly believed in that credo, they wouldn't be telling it to people. They'd be far too happy pursuing the art. It's an important question to ask. And probably one the oldest ones. When I'm reading a book, am I doing it because I want to read a book or because I want to know a story? There's quite some difference between the two. But why do I ask these questions? I don't know. Maybe because I'm wired this way. Whatever.

I fell in love with that line the only time I heard it. Nothing much left to say. Apart from that I should write more often. I don't want to stay rusty like this forever. Its a real pain having to push myself because I've been away this long. But I'm planning to publish a fiction piece every month. That's not much of a goal and I've never really written fiction but I want to give it a shot. Lots of unfinished pieces. Lots of ideas in my head, in my notepad. I just want to get them out of my system so that I can move onto other ideas. Hoping I'll write more regularly. Guitar's stuck and I'm trying my hand at C++/Linux now. Lots of things pending in my to-do list and I've been playing fifa all weekend. Maybe I should try Leo Babauta's idea of not trying to change too many habits at once.

"It is important to work on your weaknesses but more so to work on your strengths."

-Javagal Srinath?

So why do I publish? The above reasons are valid enough, yes, but again that's not it. I believe all of us create art, anything that we truly believe in, because we want to change the world. In any small way that we can. We put forth ideas so that we can validate them with what the world thinks about it. The world in our heads is differently calibrated from worlds in every other head. And the fact that we put forth ideas, in any form, is just a small effort in trying to tell the world what exactly is going on inside this brilliant mess. I publish because I want to be read, to be commented on, to be corrected, to be challenged, to be accepted and to rejuvenate. And because I want to tell the world what goes on in that fuzzy head of mine.